Thursday, July 28, 2016

Polling Quick Hits:
If Wednesday brought red state polls, (late Wednesday and early) Thursday brought a series of surveys from traditionally blue states.

California
One could look at the new PPIC survey of California and at first glance see Clinton up 16 points before moving on. That isn't the wrong conclusion. However, there are a couple of factors to point out about this one. First, both Clinton and Trump dropped relative to their positions in the last poll from PPIC in May. And it should come as no surprise that the reason is due to the addition of Gary Johnson and Jill Stein. Second, the addition of the third party candidates is noteworthy because they hit Trump more than Clinton from May to July.

This is a phenomenon worth keeping tabs on. Some have found the third party candidates drawing more from Clinton in national polls and there have been hints of a similar trend in battleground state polling as well. Still, there are not a lot of surveys out of reliably red and blue states at this point. That raises some potentially interesting questions. Notably, if the California trend holds elsewhere, does that mean minority partisans are more likely to consider their options while majority partisans stick with the presumptive statewide winner? Yes, yes. It the in-house transition from one poll to another, but it poses an interesting question.

Delaware:
Further east, Fairleigh Dickinsonhas the first look at the state of the race in the First state. Like polling in other states, the picture is one of the two major party nominees underperforming their counterparts from 2012. The undecided number is high (12 percent) as is the support in the survey going to Johnson and other (14 percent). Together, that represents a big chunk of the respondents in the poll. Nonetheless, the earliest glance at Delaware is one that has it within the Strong Clinton category at FHQ.

Oregon:
Back west in the Beaver state, Clout Research weighs in with another poll. Clout is the only survey shop to show Trump close in Oregon. And as was the case with the California poll above, the addition of third party candidates from May to July has weighed on Trump support more than Clinton's. It is still close through Clout's lens, but Trump's narrow May lead is now a small deficit (3 points) in July with Johnson and Stein included. Comparatively, the other polls in the state are more generous to Clinton, showing a wider margin more in line with where Oregon has ended up in November's past.

Pennsylvania:
The only true battleground state survey of the day comes from the commonwealth of Pennsylvania. Suffolk's first trip into the field there shows a Clinton lead (+9) consistent with the recent results from NBC/Marist. But while it is a bit rosier in the wider context of polling in the Keystone state, that may be a function of the data being gathered during the first three days of the Democratic National Convention in Philadelphia. What is certain is that the poll further solidified Pennsylvania's position just inside the Toss Up Clinton category here at FHQ. It is locked in a cluster with New Hampshire and Virginia -- two states that displaced Pennsylvania as the tipping points in the electoral college spectrum -- just a fraction of a point from the Lean Clinton category (see Watch List below).

Vermont:
It is hard to know where to start with the initial poll of the Green Mountain state from VPR/Castleton. It is hard not to notice that Clinton is running about 30 points behind Obama 2012 in Vermont. But, but the same token, it is just as difficult not to see that Trump is in third in the state behind both Clinton and "someone else". Then again, it is also not a stretch of the imagination to determine who might be the stand-in for "someone else" for most respondents in this poll. Although he is not named, favorite son, Bernie Sanders is very likely depressing that Clinton number as the nomination process comes to an official close this week.

2 The numbers in the parentheses refer to the number of electoral votes a candidate would have if he or she won all the states ranked prior to that state. If, for example, Trump won all the states up to and including Virginia (all Clinton's toss up states plus Virginia), he would have 282 electoral votes. Trump's numbers are only totaled through the states he would need in order to get to 270. In those cases, Clinton's number is on the left and Trumps's is on the right in bold italics.To keep the figure to 50 cells, Washington, DC and its three electoral votes are included in the beginning total on the Democratic side of the spectrum. The District has historically been the most Democratic state in the Electoral College.

3 New Hampshire and Virginia are collectively the states where Clinton crosses the 270 electoral vote threshold to win the presidential election. That line is referred to as the victory line. If those two states are separated with Clinton winning Virginia and Trump, New Hampshire, then there would be a tie in the Electoral College.

NOTE: Distinctions are made between states based on how much they favor one candidate or another. States with a margin greater than 10 percent between Clinton and Trump are "Strong" states. Those with a margin of 5 to 10 percent "Lean" toward one of the two (presumptive) nominees. Finally, states with a spread in the graduated weighted averages of both the candidates' shares of polling support less than 5 percent are "Toss Up" states. The darker a state is shaded in any of the figures here, the more strongly it is aligned with one of the candidates. Not all states along or near the boundaries between categories are close to pushing over into a neighboring group. Those most likely to switch -- those within a percentage point of the various lines of demarcation -- are included on the Watch List below.

*Due to the way in which states with no polling are treated in 2016 by FHQ -- uniform swing -- South Carolina has seen its "average" rise. In the last month, as more polling data has been accrued, that average uniform swing has shrunk from nearly three points to just a shade more than one point toward Clinton. That development has pushed South Carolina closer to the Strong Trump category and onto the Watch List below.

The Watch List1

State

Switch

Alaska

from Lean Trump

to Toss Up Trump

Arizona

from Toss Up Trump

to Toss Up Clinton

Arkansas

from Strong Trump

to Lean Trump

New Hampshire

from Toss Up Clinton

to Lean Clinton

New Jersey

from Strong Clinton

to Lean Clinton

Pennsylvania

from Toss Up Clinton

to Lean Clinton

South Carolina

from Lean Trump

to Strong Trump

Tennessee

from Lean Trump

to Strong Trump

Utah

from Toss Up Trump

to Lean Trump

Virginia

from Toss Up Clinton

to Lean Clinton

1Graduated weighted average margin within a fraction of a point of changing categories.